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            A couple old as mud wobbles to my counter. He scowls like he’s just stepped into dog shit, slaps his check down on the counter, [img_assist|nid=7087|title=Milja by Loren Dann© 2011|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=200|height=284]and slides it toward me, message-side up. In a phlegmy voice he growls, “What the hell’s this supposed to mean?”

            The back of the check reads, “You are dead already!” Of course I recognize my Marigold’s arcane, Euro-trash scrawl immediately.  

            I say, “We choose our waitresses carefully from among the graduates of the finest waitressing school in Paris.” I lean closer with my secret. “Many of them have read deeply in philosophy. I assure you this is obviously a philosophical statement.”

            The old woman at his side sneers. “Well if this is philosophy, somebody should tell her parents.”

            I respond, “They are as heartbroken as you are.” The couple finally leaves and I’m relieved we’ll never see them again. Neither them, nor their family nor their friends nor their professional colleagues. In fact, a whole army of greedy, gaping, chewing, and drooling mouths now will never darken our door. I restrain myself from running to tell Ron the happy news. 

            My Tiger Lily moves in a nimbus of pale yellow light. Water glasses glitter in her presence, French fries glow at her touch. “Too late already so much.”

            She’s come from one of those countries I’ve never heard of, and I’m not embarrassed to admit there are a lot of those. I assume her English will never get any better, which is just fine with me.

 

            We all work together at the Kitchen Knook on 4th Street close to the shopping mall. I’m the late-shift cashier, a very demanding and responsible position, which is why I’m paid so little. Ron, the night manager, explains that the low pay discourages frivolous people who lack the drive and determination to take the job seriously. And he promises me that with another year of this responsibility I could go anywhere, do anything. Smiling he says, “Even president of, like, General Motors, or something.”

            Of course I’m impressed, even if I can’t remember who General Motors is. I’ve told Ron we ought to have cool military uniforms. I remind him that people love uniforms, and they love to have their food brought to them by persons wearing uniforms. I explain to him that basically, this uniform wearing is the wave of the future, and we need to be part of the future if we expect to succeed. I remind him that I watch the news, so I know what’s going on. I tell him that from what I’ve seen, eventually all the people feeding us will wear uniforms and this will make us all really happy.

            A young, attractive woman places her check on my counter, but she is not smiling. “You know,” she says, “this sort of thing usually indicates serious psychological difficulties.” On the back of her check my Little Petunia has scrawled, “The surface is without substance.”

            I respond, “We try to help those who are in difficulty.”

            “That may seem noble to you, but you should not inflict such darkness on those of us already entombed.” A tear sparkles at the corner of her eye. She turns and leaves, and my regret follows her like a thick snake. 

            My Buttercup waits tables, from 4 PM until Midnight. What she does is what waitresses do, and her customers bring their checks to my cash register, a cash register of which I am proprietor. They slide their checks across my counter accompanied by either a fist-full of cash, or a shiny credit card. We don’t take checks, that’s our policy.

            Our three other waitresses are named Camille, Ellen and Brandy. Hoping to pump up their tips, each writes a little message on the backs of their checks. Ellen is in law school, so she just writes “Thanks so much!” with a little diamond at the bottom of the exclamation point. Maybe she should change it to a dollar sign. Brandy writes, “Have a Good Day,” and puts smiles in the middles of the “O”s. The horror is that she earnestly means it. I tremble at her glance. But Camille is the worst. Camille writes, “Smile, God Loves you!” and she uses little hearts to dot the “I” and at the bottom of the exclamation point, and in place of all of the “O”s. It must take her ten minutes to draw the thing out. But my Squash-Blossom is different. Where others are mesmerized by the surface, she sees all the way down.

            “Stop touching yourself and start touching others,” is written quirkily on the check slid onto my counter by a young man whose acne will be with him until he’s collecting Social Security.

            He says, “Women these days are so fucked up.”

            I shrug. “Estrogen’s been leaking into the water supply.”

            His eyes get large. “You’re shitting me?”

            “Drink bottled water,” I say. “It’s the only way to be safe.”    

            My Rose-Petal always shares her shift with at least two of these other waitresses, along with a revolving door of dark, foreign-looking busboys who pass through so fast I never learn their names. So we have four waitresses for a three-waitress staff. Ron makes up the schedule. He says the task will make him crazy. Apparently, doing the schedule is the hardest thing he’s ever done, even from high school, figuring out how to cover from day to day, week to week. He begs me to pick up the bus-tray whenever I can. These women will drive me nuts, he says, and I’m sure that would be a short trip. But I remind him that busing tables is beneath the responsibilities of the cashier, who must handle money. After all, what is more diseased-ridden in our society than cash, filthy cash?

            Ron does not like me and never agrees with anything I say. But he does not want to hire another cashier. His cashiers tend to steal, and he tells me I’m the first in half a decade not robbing him blind. All Ron wants to do is sit in the back-office at the computer and download porn from the internet. He burns the porn onto CD’s and takes them home with him every night and does god-knows-what thereafter. I’m too nauseated to ask.

            “The brain atrophies before the penis,” is followed by a smiling sun-face with X’s over the eyes. The middle-aged guy belonging to this check grins as he leans across the counter. “I just took my pill,” he whispers, “and I’ve got a woody like a sequoia. What time does she get off?”

            “She doesn’t,” I assure him. “Our evil manager keeps her shackled in the basement. He’s the only one gets to see her.”  [img_assist|nid=7088|title=Out Building Walnut Hill: Pagoda of Weeds by Dae Rebeck-Sanchez © 2011|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=225|height=225]

            He frowns sympathetically. “Any little thing I can do to help?”

            In fact I keep all of these complaints from Ron. He likes my Little Dove even less than he likes me. He thinks she thinks about him. If it wasn’t for the fact that she can carry six filled platters in the middle of a rush, she’d have been long-gone. At closing I count the register while she helps clean up. I lose count every time I look up to see her bending over. I lose count a lot, so this usually takes the rest of the night. Ron comes over to me after firing another busboy. He likes to keep in practice. “Stupid little shit,” he says looking at nothing in particular, and it takes me a second to realize he’s not talking to me. “Any of your creepy friends need a job?”

            I tell him my creepy friends are all over-booked. I tell him it seems like people will only hire the really creepy ones. He looks hard into my eyes. “You don’t like this job, do you?”

            “I love this job,” I say. “I gave up being General Motors just to work here.”

            He looks at me a moment and then he smiles. “My bet is you’re going to be here a good long time.”

            I ask, “Is that a promise?” I finish counting, or actually just give up and write down the amount on the slip that I already know is supposed to be in the register.

            “Oh yeah,” he says, “that is my promise to you!”

            As he walks away I say, “Thanks! Mom will be so pleased.”

            I time my departure to follow her out the door. Half a block from the restaurant I say,

            “Listen, you have to stop writing that shit on the checks. People get upset. They say things. They think things.”

            She shrugs without turning.   

            I say, “It seems they are not grateful for your subtle generosity.” She has gorgeous shoulders. I say, “If you don’t like gratitude you should be happy every day.” 

            Finally she turns, her arrogant frown thrills me.   

            “Do you ever have a good time?” She stops at the corner, her bus is already pulling up. She shrugs as she brings a token out of her pocket. Climbing the steps she does not turn. “Misery is underrated,” she says.

            The doors fold closed, her sweet butt framed sweetly in the folding bus-door windows. 

Nothing left for me to do but sigh, which I do louder than the bus.

           

            Two women. Young, secretary-types. The taller, older one slides the check toward me like we’re conspirators and this is grade school. On the back of the check my Dumpling has written, “A penis in the hand – better two in the bush.”

            “How was your meal today?” I ask with the blandest look I own.

            “Funny,” she says, and the two leave giggling. I spend the next ten minutes figuring.

  After closing, my Nightingale leaves without a glance back. I hustle to catch up, pull up just behind her right shoulder. Her profile fills me with something I cannot name. “Tell me? Was it the Freud that didn’t sit well, or the Kafka?”

            With her firm, long-legged gate she steps on the gas. I hustle double-step to keep up. She turns to face me without losing a step, her grin vicious and wise. “You!” And she says, “You!”

            At the corner she turns. A guy is just getting out of a cab. She strides faster, has her hand on the closing door, slips inside and is gone, all before I can say, “Me! Me! Me!”

            Two little girls, maybe twelve years old between them, timidly place their check and cash on my counter. On the back I read, “Death is your friend!” I shove the cash back toward them

            “Hey!” I say kind of loud and I’m smiling. “It’s your lucky day. You’re lunch was free! 

Hope you enjoyed it. Come back again soon!”

            I’m relieved when the little girls turn to each other and smile. The one girl says, “Thanks,” as she grabs the cash. The other says, “Yeah,” and they’re laughing together before they reach the door. And I’m relieved nobody is making a big deal.

            An hour and a half later and it’s slow. To my Dandelion I say, “We have to talk.” I take her by the elbow to lead her to the back. She shrugs me off, gets to the office door before I do, stands arms folded across her generous chest, and watches me approach like a hot dog watches mustard. I stand as close to her as I can without fainting. “Please leave the kids alone. If you aren’t about to say something nice to a kid, just shut up. How about it?”

The fire in her black eyes roasts my scrotum no matter which way I turn. When I don’t say anything she sneers. “Pot-licker,” [img_assist|nid=7091|title=Dinner by Kathleen Montrey © 2011|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=225|height=189]she says and then she moves past me like I’m a can of dead flowers. People want to know why I hate my life. 

            Back at the register Ron comes over smiling like his whole face’s shot with botox. He calls out, “Brandy, cover the register a minute?” He signals me to follow and we walk back to the storeroom. He flicks-on the light and closes the door behind us. He paces back and forth like he’s been constipated for a month. Watching him is about to wear me out. I sit down on a case of catsup bottles. He looks like he’s trying to think about something, and then he steps close and leans forward. “We have a problem.” Then he freezes, stares into my face like whatever I do next will twist my future absolutely. So I do nothing. “We’re missing a can of mayonnaise,” he says. Then he watches me like by knowing this I will now change into something.

            “A whole can of mayo, you say?” I squint and dip my head as if I know what he’s getting at. I ask, “Any ideas?” Because I don’t like having-to-think forced upon me. I’d rather that it sneak up on me, like a toothache, until finally I have to do something about it, but all along I’ve been sort of dealing with it in the background.  

            “One or two,” he says with cultivated inscrutability and then takes a step back, “one, or two.” 

            He sits down on boxes of canned soup and sighs, rubs his hands together and then along the tops of his thighs. The aura of defeat hovers over him as miasmal as a fart.

            To move things along I ask, “One of the gallon cans?” I’m incredulous because it is incredible, and I want to be certain before I continue with this thinking-thing. He nods.

            “And you’re sure it’s not misplaced?” I ask. “Because you looked everywhere?” Silence in this case is assent.

            “Well,” I say still not grasping the magnitude of our situation, “it wasn’t like it was a can of the good stuff. Can’t be more than a few dollars a can. I mean, we’ll make it up in tips.”

            Suddenly he looks at me in a way that I had never expected him to look. As if his face was a box of tools, and this expression was just not included. “You don’t get it, do you?” Suspicion tightens his eyes. “Can you be so fucking self-centered and naive?” He stands, slowly steps forward to bring his face right up to mine so that I have to lean back. “This isn’t just about the fucking money. It isn’t even about any fucking principles. The question I can’t answer is why? And even worse how?” His own suspicion turns to incredulity. “Pick up one of those fucking cans. How you going to sneak one of those out of here? Where the fuck you going to hide it? How you going to carry it so nobody guesses? What kind of fucking bag you going to put it in so nobody says, hey, where you taking that gallon of fucking mayo?”

            Before I can venture any stupid guesses he says, “And why? How much goddamn mayo can one family eat, for Christ sake?” He begins to pant, his voice is getting louder, and I’m wishing he brushed his teeth more often. “You can’t put this shit on goddamn breakfast cereal, for Christ sake!”

            Ron looks around the floor like he’s surrounded by scorpions. “And if somebody’s snatched the mayo, should we maybe put an armed guard on the tuna?” His face has become very red. “I defy anyone to explain to me why any normal human being would steal a gallon of goddamn mayonnaise!”

            Who could imagine Ron is a passionate philosopher? But he’s already given-up trying to find anything out from me. He’s turned and is already reaching for the door handle. So with hardly a twitch he’s opened the door. And there stands my little Flesh-Bulb.

            She’s looking a bit cowed though she’s easily a head taller than Ron. He stares up at her a long time. My Sweet Onion cannot return his look. He steps around her and returns to the restaurant. She stands another moment looking at the floor and then she returns to the restaurant. And me? I’m still sitting on my ass, Brandy covering the register for me, and I’m waiting for this head-thing to stop, so much like a blender running filled with steel screws. 

             A priest comes to my register smiling, slides his check toward me with his cash. I see her handwriting and tremble. I turn it over to read, “Sleep with God!”

            The priest says, “Your staff has a rare and subtle sense of the world behind the mask. I shall return often.”

            Panic grabs my throat, I suppress the scream and manage to whisper, “That would perhaps not be wise.” The priest’s smile disappears, as his eyes get large. Leaning closer I say, “Our manager is a Satanist, and he would say anything to corrupt you.” I drop my voice to add, “He would even lie to you.”

            The priest is about to turn. I touch his sleeve and add, “Pray for our souls.” The door closes and he never looks back.

            About a second later Brandy steps up smiling. “Let me know if you need me to cover for you.” Her voice is so bright I put on sunglasses.

            “That’s generous of you, but I can’t possibly burden you with this enormous responsibility.” 

            I pull another girly magazine from the rack and lean back as I open it.

            When I look up again I’m surprised to see Brandy still standing there. She cranks her smile up another level. “I hear Ron’s got you on some kind of inventory duty or something. About the tuna, I mean. It’s a little slow today. Maybe I could give you a hand.” Now I’m looking for the hidden camera. These places always have hidden cameras even though they usually don’t work, but if we have them, they must be really well hidden. So I ask, “Did you wait on that priest?”

  Brandy experiences a panic entirely out of proportion to the question, which relieves me completely. “No,” she says, “that’s what’s-her-name’s table. Why?” As if she doesn’t know. 

“Did he complain?”

            “No, worse. He was so impressed he threatened to bring all his priest-friends here. Does that make any sense to you?” I look at her real hard, a sort of highlight and underline to the point.

            She turns and scans the room as if help might arrive any second. She shrugs before she turns back again. “I guess some old guys find her type charming. Don’t ask me. Old guys are always so obvious.” There’s nothing to that with my name on it, so I let it drift. After another minute she drifts too, and I’m relieved.

            A withered and old woman about four feet tall staggers to the counter, slides her check

Across and says, “What the hell’s this shit?” My Little Cauliflower has written, “Sex is death.”

            “Words to live by,” I say hoping that if I don’t look at her she’ll evaporate.

            “Know anybody needs to get laid, give ’em this.” Then trembling, she scribbles a phone number at the bottom of one of the take-out menus stacked on the counter. She doesn’t wait for me to answer, but it takes her four minutes to walk to the door. When she’s gone I fold up the menu and shove it into my back pocket. I know that one never knows.  

            A heartbeat later Ron’s standing beside my shoulder. “You know who that is?”

            “Don’t know who she is, but I know what she wants.”

            “She’s maybe old and crazy but she’s rich as they come.”

            “Then, here!” I say and pass him the menu. “She’s waiting for you to call.”  

            He looks at the menu with widening eyes. “You shitting me?”

            “Would I shit you?”

            He grins. “That’s why I let you work here.” He walks away lips muttering the phone number like he expects to remember it.

            Walking behind my gorgeous Petunia as she makes her way to her bus I say, “Your English is getting so much better.”

            Walking fast she shrugs without turning. 

  Perhaps my little Artichoke is a secret poet. Her way with words is so elegantly awkward. 

Or perhaps she simply speaks as she thinks. Thinking and speaking so rarely coincide, but perhaps my Apricot Jelly has discovered some secret. And perhaps if I’m earnest and determined she’ll share that secret with me. We reach her bus stop and I’m about to peel off toward my apartment but she turns to me. “Every day is coffee. How is that? How is that?”

            I’m stunned. No words, her eyes are black icicles in bright sunlight. And for the first time ever, she smiles. Her teeth are bad but her smile is brilliant. By the time my brain remembers I have a mouth and the muscles in my jaw unlock, she’s already climbed the steps to the bus and has gone. When I get home I make a note on my calendar, it’s that sort of thing.

           

            Later in the week we’re really busy, a convention or something, I only find out after the fact, but ninety percent of our customers are female and almost all of them are young, some sort of convention. For the entire evening rush, Ron’s running in one direction and looking in the other. Beaming with his natural-born idiocy, he can’t get to these tables fast enough. He’s even carrying platters and busing tables, an explosion of activity that demands to be commemorated with a photograph it’s so unlikely. It’s Brandy’s day off, just Camille and Ellen and my Sweet Plantain, and we’re all stunned by Ron’s enthusiastic participation, though for different reasons and to different degrees. Ron’s one of those hiding-managers; don’t bother him unless the register’s short or there’s blood on the floor. My little Star-Light maneuvers around Ron like he’s a pile of dog shit. Even Camille finds his participation remarkable, so she makes a remark.

            “What’s he doing here?”

            “As little as possible.”

            “Doesn’t he know even how to carry dishes?”

            “Like the rest of us, he knows as little as he can get away with.”

            “Something’s going to happen,” she says.

            “Something always does.” I know I’ll be proved right, but I’m surprised at how soon.

            The collision happens when I’m not looking, but the sound wakes even the comatose. And before the last glass shatters, the stream of venom from my little Buttercup’s sweet lips is terrifying Ron shields himself with his server tray. Fortunately, my Sugar Cube has reverted to her mother tongue, so no one understands what she’s saying, but none of us needs a translation. Women at the tables giggle and point, terror, and embarrassment alternate in Ron’s eyes like lights on a billboard. 

            My little Lollipop’s pale face is red as a sunset, and then to all of our surprise, big, bright tears appear in her eyes. Its then my heart shatters like another dropped glass.

  In the next instant Ellen appears with broom and dustpan muttering about lawsuits. My little Nectarine is sobbing, tears glide down her cheeks, and I struggle to resist running over to lap them up with my tongue.  

            But Ron suddenly recaptures his self-importance and sense of disproportion and explains to my Love-Doll that she’s fired.

            Without a thought beyond a determination to spare my little Pop-Tart any more embarrassment I decide to tell Ron that I quit, and then describe to him how deep into Hell I know he’ll fall. And I’m ready to do this. And I promise myself I’ll do this, just as soon as I can step away from the register.

            But somehow my hands have become cramped around the edge of the counter. Somehow they’ve escaped my control and have conspired to hold onto the counter-edge. Do they know something I don’t? Do they understand something that has completely escaped me? Do they recognize something about me that I ignore at my own peril? Have they learned something from working here that I’ve forgotten, or worse, never even recognized? Just clamped onto the edge of the counter, and I can’t make my hands relax.

            Suddenly and to my surprise Ron’s standing immediately beside me. “You put up with this shit every day, you deserve a raise.” And then he mutters into my ear a number.

            He’s breathing hard so I’m pretty certain he’s serious. Frozen by greed and cowardice, perhaps, my left hand, the faithless hand, the treacherous hand, the hand that can’t be trusted, devious, cynical, and cruel remains gripping the counter. I call upon my trusty right hand, but clearly it has entered into a conspiracy with the left. My hands in remorseless grip of the counter are listening to Ron and they like the sound of his number. My hands are thinking about my landlord and my checkbook, and how good it feels to wrap themselves around a mug of cold beer. And thinking this they begin to think how they would miss all this. So my devious, treacherous hands betray me. As they so often have in the past, they do as they wish and not as I want. My hands are content to watch my little Pudding-Cup tearfully gather her things, exchange her apron for her overcoat, and then walk to the door. But worst, most dreadfully, most terribly, my hands smile derisively as my Tulip-Blossom steps out the door without even a single, vicious glance back.

            When Brandy comes in the next day she makes it clear to Ron she believes my Succulent Rasinette was dealt with too harshly. Ron fires her before her coat’s off. She looks hard at me as she leaves, but no tears for her. She’s tougher than I’d guessed. By the dinner-rush two new waitresses are plying our victuals; women who’ve been yelling at cooks and filling water glasses since Nixon was president. A reassuring stability has emerged, refreshing in its inconsequentiality.

            My hands are ecstatic with money play, but my heart remains unemployed.

In addition to the novel Master Siger’s Dream, recently published by What Books Press of Los Angeles, A. W. DeAnnuntis’s fiction has appeared in: Silent Voices, The Armchair Aesthete, Timber Creek Review, Lynx Eye, Los Angeles Review, Yemassee, First Class, Pacific Coast Journal, Short Stories Bimonthly, Luna Negra, CrossConnect, Mind in Motion (where he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize), and many others.

The first thing is we smell smoke.

            ‘Annie!’

            The Living Skeleton – Isaac to his friends – is the only one still stuck upstairs with me. He’s got one foot on the fire escape, skinny ribs slipping between window and sill, and he’s shrieking at me. ‘Come on Annie!’

            My legs are not my best feature – never have been – but now they’ve rooted like winter wheat and I can’t move. Panic seals up my throat. I have to rip my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

            ‘Come where?’ I gasp. ‘Through a slit of a window or straight through the wall? That fire escape’ll never take my weight. Get help. Just try Isaac, try.’

            It’s the most I’ve ever said to him.

            The Museum is both work and home to me.  The top floors accommodate many of the live exhibits but Isaac and I are the only ones still upstairs today. He’s having trouble with his digestion and has taken the morning off. I’ve been getting ready for the afternoon show: taking as long as possible and wanting to be left alone. There I am, all dressed up as Lady Macbeth. Out damned spot: even larger than life.

            Isaac’s face goes red and I know he’s about ready to wash his hands of me. He opens his mouth but then closes it again as his impossible bones slide away through the gap. Shoes clatter on the ironwork. Then my legs buckle and I hear the hiss of a hundred steam trains as the blackness threatens.

            Smoke stings my nostrils and brings me back, sharp. A squeeze of real fear sends me scrabbling across the floor toward the window. I put my hands on the panes of glass, find my knees, and hoist myself up enough to look out.

            Broadway. The circling crowd on the street below tip up tiny doll faces and point. Blood pumps noisily in my ears, competing against the wail of bells outside and the roaring fire behind me, eating its way up the stairs.  I manage to stand. Then I take a firm grip of the window sash and pull it up as hard as I can. Pain streaks down my shoulders, my toes grind against the wooden floor. It lifts a little. The window opens enough for a normal person to crush their ribs through, but impossible for me, for the giant, Anna Swan.

[img_assist|nid=7084|title=Nature Photography by Michael Morell © 2011|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=250|height=129]

             ‘Just look at you, Anna.’ Mother used to shake her head over the sight of me with all the wonderment of a child surprising a butterfly out of a rose bush.

            My parents weren’t for Barnum in the beginning. His agent came down the track to our weather-washed house near Tatamagouche Bay and ran the gauntlet of all my brothers and sisters marauding about the yard. Mother and Father listened to him with arms folded and Scotch wariness glinting in their eyes. I hid behind the pantry door; caught a sight of tweed, of shining shoes, of a waxed moustache. Out there, he was almost a match for me in freakery.

            New York City. Piano lessons. Books to read. An exhibit, but a prized one. The second time the man came with his offer, hands were shaken.

 

           There are so many people down there on the street. They’re pointing, calling, running back and forth crazily between the fire trucks. They’re pouring out of the buildings opposite and from around the corner on Ann Street. I have to keep the fire away. I run to the door, slam it: push across a display case with a two-headed calf and a threadbare push-me-pull-you. I tug at the table – that won’t budge – but I strip down the drapes and push and poke them, wadding my makeshift barricade like a pastry-chef trimming a pie. Then I back away to the window and hunch beneath it, clutching my knees, balled up in prayer. These are bad minutes.

            ‘Get away from the window! Now!’

            The voice shocks me. My shoulders lock up. I have time to think – Irish? – and then one look at his grim face, one glimpse of his axe, sends me scooting away across the floor as the fire fighter smashes through the window.

            ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he calls. When I don’t move: ‘There’s no time for this.’

            ‘But the fire escape won’t hold me.’ Stiff, but suddenly calm, I get to my feet and watch his eyes track upwards to my face. That stops him.

            ‘I’ll be back,’ he says. Tears burn my eyes as his footsteps follow Isaac’s and I’m alone again.

 

          Barnum looked me up and down like a prize sow, made a few notes in one of his books and put me on a stand next to Colonel John Nutt. The Colonel stands about as high as my knee. I’ve got nothing good to say about him, yet I’ve stood next to Nutt and smiled till my lips dried up. Every night, from my very first night in the Museum, I’ve lain curled in my bed, picturing my mother’s tearful face as I waved farewell. I’ve cursed myself as the greatest fool of a girl there’s ever been.

            They say I was just born large and kept right on growing. That it happens that way with some folk. But my family loved me. They took no more notice of my size than it took to step over my legs when I sat on the floor to eat my dinner, or when they had to wait while I stooped and twisted my way out of our cottage door. I went to school and loved it. I thought I’d make a teacher, a good one too. For that I had to go to Truro and board with my aunt. I figured that the children would stare at first but that they’d soon settle to me and I’d do fine. I hadn’t bargained for the adults. Not for the staring on the street, or the sniggering and name-calling from the men as I walked home from school. It wasn’t like the Bay where everyone had watched me grow, year after year. Father came to take me home.

            Barnum’s man arrived three months later. Of course my parents said a straight-out no, but Barnum doesn’t deal in nos. And I was seventeen, desperate for a life. I wanted to learn. I wanted to see, and if that meant being seen, well, I thought it was a price I could pay. Thought it right up until Mr Barnum gave me a quick once over and then sent me up to meet the rest of the inhabitants of the American Museum.

 

             That fireman said he’d be back but I know it’s impossible. I’m trembling. The noise and the heat of the fire are coming for me. Perhaps the best thing would be to just open the door. To let it in. To get it over with. I’ve thought about death. But I’m swaying back and forth and a painful splinter of laughter climbs up my throat because I’m beyond counting the number of times I’ve wished I was dead. I’ve longed to be away from these gross bones and distended limbs, my drooping face, my hands, my- Lord! – There isn’t a particle of flesh on me I don’t despise. Yet here is death coming for me and suddenly I’m screaming inside, “I want out! Let me out! Get me out!”[img_assist|nid=20518|title=(null)|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=300|height=385]

            Something’s happening. I’m aware of a change and it takes me a moment. Then I realise it’s the sounds from the street. The bells are not ringing. The crowd is subdued.  There’s a thin mist of smoke in the room now, but if I keep low the air is still clean enough to breathe. I crawl back to the window. Glass scrapes my hands and knees but I feel nothing. I look down again. Everything’s stopped. From building to building every particle of road and sidewalk is taken up by men and women staring up at the fire consuming the Museum. Directly below I can even make out people I know. There’s Isaac and little Colonel Nutt. There’s that Josephine with her hirsute son. Next that girl – the Circassian Beauty – I haven’t even troubled to find out her name. And Millie-Christine. Although both twins gave me shy smiles, I’ve ignored them and tried my hardest not to stare. I’ve kept myself apart. I couldn’t stand to look at them. I couldn’t bear that they were looking at me, or that we were all so different, and yet our difference was the very thing that made us all the same. But now? What would I not give to hear the Two-headed Nightingale sing, to watch men scratch their heads and peer at the Feejee Mermaid, even to stand next to ugly old Nutt while he winks at all the pretty girls passing through our halls.

            People are pointing at something on the ground. I squint trying to see what it is. The something is moving upwards. There are two men. There is a crane. The men in the crane are waving. One is tall; one is shorter, fatter, with a high bald dome of a forehead. Unmistakably Barnum. The crane grows up past my window on the fifth floor. Barnum and the firefighter are in a cage, still a floor below. But they’re rising all the time. Hope slithers into the gaps between my ribs.

            ‘Here!’ The firefighter climbs in the window. He winces as the smoke catches his throat. Barnum holds a large white handkerchief over his face. His eyes bulge meaningfully toward me but I can’t understand a thing. I stand rigid, a dumb mannequin, as the firefighter winds thick ropes around my waist and under my arms. He binds in my skirt to my ankles. Then he somehow plucks from the sky a green blanket, slung with ropes like a hammock. He pulls me towards it and I see what they mean to do.

            I don’t hesitate. I lie on my front in the hammock and it’s tied up like shoelaces across my back. The firefighter climbs back into Barnum’s basket. I hear them shout. Ropes creak. Air slips between me and the floorboards. It feels…wonderful.

            And it is wonderful. I’m fearful: slung like a sausage, five floors up, swinging out of a window over a crowd of hundreds. I’m afraid: the ropes might fray, something could rip, I could slide from my casing and plummet into the ground below. But beyond that, it feels wonderful. I’m weightless, a feather. I am nothing and everything. I’m the great proud figurehead of a galleon setting sail from her harbor for the very first time. It’s the longest, shortest, coldest flight any Swan has ever taken. As I bump down amongst the hands and hollers of the firemen I’m gasping and laughing and coughing and shaking and smiling. I’m alive.

            ‘Annie!’ ‘Anna!’ ‘Anna!’ They’re all here. I’ve never felt this way. It’s as if everything inside me is broken and mended in the same moment. The others clutch at me and I cling to them. I’m beyond thought, oblivious to the fire and the work going on around us trying to save the building.

            Someone puts a blanket across my shoulders. One of Millie-Christine’s hands holds mine. A scalding cup of tea is pressed into my

other hand. Hot and sweet, it settles me back to earth.

[img_assist|nid=7085|title=Soon Forgotten by Kristen Solecki© 2011|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=249|height=166]

            Then: ‘Hush up, girls.’

            We all turn at the sharp sound of Isaac’s voice. Only a step away I see the pale balding head framed by baby black curls. His back is straight, his arms spread wide. A press of reporters leans in to hear him. Barnum lets them have it in style.

            ‘Here’s your headlines, boys. Here’s the news. Just write the name Barnum. P-H-I-N-E-A-S, T. Barnum. And ask your readers this boys! Ask them who else could find a crane so fast in New York City? Who else could set that crane to winch a girl measuring seven foot tall and weighing too many pounds out of a burning building? Who else boys? Why – nobody else, that’s who. Only Barnum!’

            Then he strides off into the crowd, crushing hands and nodding, balling his fists on his hips and shaking his head.

            Slowly it comes to us that we have nowhere to sleep, no work, no American Museum and yet we know we’ll be all right. We have Barnum.

 

 

Kate Braithwaite was born and grew up in Edinburgh. In 2010 she won the Random House Canada Student Writing Award and a novel excerpt, Charlatan, was published by the University of Toronto.  Her current project is a novel about murder and terror plots in 17th Century London. Kate and her family live near Kennett Square.

It was mid October when Stan found himself on the move again, towing a U-haul trailer through North Carolina and on to Virginia, destined for Maine. He had driven through the night and into morning, enjoying the calmness of the empty highway as it bent and bowed by small towns and hilly fields. These were the drives that Stan liked best. He felt unrushed, free to go as slow as he pleased, to savor what he suspected to be the last of such journeys. In Maine, a woman waited for him and for the ring he had promised her.

 

The Virginia border was an hour behind him when the traffic emerged, a body of short temper and patience that Stan felt no desire to be a part of. He ate breakfast at a diner in Richmond and watched the stream of work-bound men and women through picture frame glass, a cup of coffee in his hand. They seemed too young, like children who had wandered away from their parents’ grasp only to find themselves running libraries, selling cars, answering phones, too frightened or cowed to admit that there had been a mistake. Stan wondered if any of them would see him through the window or if they’d only notice their own reflection, their eyes shining with prospect. It had been men and women like them who had forced him to retire, their talk sweeter and outlook brighter, their presence too encompassing. From his forties into his late fifties he had managed a small brokerage firm in Atlanta. Now he did nothing.

The food was a disappointment. The eggs were overcooked, the bacon under, but he ate them without complaint and tipped well. This was his idea of grace. He drove on through the morning and into the afternoon, making a lunch out of a couple granola bars and a handful of cashews from a can he kept in the glove box. It felt good to make good time, and he admired his own restraint, though he could feel the beginnings of a shake in his legs, a touch of weakness in his grip. Pulling off now would be too costly; another hour lost to waitresses, booths that were made for two and people who would only look at him as long as he wasn’t looking back. No, at this rate he’d be in Scranton by evening, and that’s where he wanted to be. It had been there, more than forty years ago, that he and his first wife, Rachel, had wed, and thirty six since he’d been back.

The thought of visiting her had come to him as he had driven through South Carolina, the stillness of the night having given his mind ample room to wander. At first the idea had seemed impulsive, crazy, but he hadn’t been able to deny its appeal. Something had stirred inside of him, the itch of curiosity, and it was this compulsion that drove him as he steered onto the exit for Scranton. As his truck coasted down the ramp, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was a bug being sucked down a drain. That, even if he turned around now, the current was going to draw him back to this place and swallow him in its depths.

Stan didn’t recognize the town. He remembered flatness, simplicity, but all around him buildings rose into the evening sky, their shadows long cast. They weren’t the skyscrapers of Atlanta or New York, but the burgeoning offices and apartment complexes were enough to make him feel smaller than he had felt as a child. Every now and then he’d see something he remembered: the street corner where he had won his first fight, the one where he had lost the second and third, but these memories, once momentous, now seemed like marbles cast on the sidewalk. He turned down Lackawanna Avenue and drove past what used to be the Thrift Discount Center, now a Rite Aide. It was there he had had his first job and kissed his first woman, a girl named Debbie who chewed peppermints and had refused to call him anything other than Stanley. She meant nothing to him now, but there had been a time when he was convinced he would marry her, a time before he had known Rachel.

The sheer unlikelihood that Rachel still lived in town didn’t faze Stan. Though he could feel the sweat on his fingertips and chin, a calmness overtook him as he drove past the water tower and vacant lots. He recognized more and more, driving by the old homes and neighborhoods, the houses of friends he had used to know and women he once loved. He mused that, in his young life, it must have been his lot to love every woman. He had adored all of the girls in his high school, their differences in countenance and body thrilling him. Some even returned that affection, and it was times like those where he felt he had discovered a great secret, something dark, too great for any one man. It had scared him.

The house sat at the end of a long, oak-lined cul-de-sac. It startled Stan to see that it had grown, an addition sprouting from the left side, a two-car garage from the right. He had remembered it as quaint, cozy even, but now it appeared lifeless, its red shutters perfectly level and aligned. The lawn was as trim as the neighbors’–better than the neighbors’–and the rose bushes had bloomed brighter. Even the sun seemed to favor this house above all others, the gentle light of the early evening cradling it in its arms, the house that Stan had once called home.

He parked in the street. It would have been too brazen to park in the driveway, especially if it wasn’t Rachel who lived there now but a family he had never met. To him, it seemed impossible that the house could be Rachel’s. She had been simple, liked simple things, and the house spoke of complication, sophistication even. This house was not Rachel. Still, he decided that he would knock, to be sure that his suspicions were correct, and then leave.

The man who answered the door was lithe, skeletal, but tall. Stan had never considered himself short, had in fact been as tall or taller than any of the people he had worked with, but this man towered over him, the top of his head almost grazing the door frame. Opening the door seemed to be a struggle, and Stan watched the muscles of the man’s forearms as they tightened, as if the door had been hollowed out and filled with lead plates. He couldn’t have been older than fifty.

“Hi, sorry to bother you,” Stan said. The man now looked down at him.

“It’s no trouble. Can I help you?” the man said. His voice surprised Stan. It was gentle.

“I don’t think so. I used to know somebody who lived here but I think they’ve gone,” Stan said.

The man’s brow furrowed. “Are you looking for the McCafertys? They’re next door.”

“No, no. Her name was Rachel.”

At the mention of her name the man’s face began to sag. The corners of his mouth drooped. “So you don’t know,” he said.

The words came out quietly, somberly, and Stan could feel a rushing in his ears. All around him the world rustled in the breeze. The trees were swaying, the roses crumpling under the soft press of the wind, but all Stan felt was the concrete under the soles of his shoes.

“She died,” the man said. “Two years ago.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Stan said. The words felt empty, an offering of something he didn’t have to give. Stan felt detached, as if it had been he who had delivered the bad news. His back ached, but his heart did not, and it was this coldness that bothered him as he watched the eyes of the man in the doorway. How dull they looked.

“Come in. I was just about to open a bottle,” the man said.

Stan followed him inside. The house was neat and clean, obsessively almost, as if every surface had been scrubbed and sprayed. Pictures hung on the walls but none were of Rachel. They were of young, smiling faces that bared their teeth at Stan as he passed through the foyer and into the living room. When the house had belonged to him, it had been a dusty, dimly lit place, but now no shadows hid in the corners. There were lamps everywhere. All of them were lit. The man pulled a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers from a glass cabinet in the dining room and motioned for Stan to have a seat in a large, overstuffed recliner.

“How did you know her?” Stan asked as he sat.

“She was my wife,” the man said, placing the bottle and tumblers on a glass coffee table. He poured the drinks with a steady hand, though the weight of the bottle seemed to be pulling him over.

“I’m sorry,” Stan said.

The man nodded. “ It’s Paul, by the way,” he said and handed Stan a glass.

“Stan,” he said.

Paul paused for a moment. “Stan Richardson?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Stan said. At first he had considered giving a fake name, to pretend to be an old friend, then excuse himself as soon as possible. But he was stubborn and unwilling to anger the dead. He had decided to face this head on, but he felt the first twinge of regret in his chest.

“So, you’re the boys’ father,” Paul said.

“That’s me,” Stan said. He didn’t want to think of his sons, Greg or Daniel. In his mind they were still nine and seven, watching him pack his truck, sobbing.

“Ain’t that something,” Paul said. He stepped toward Stan, as if to take the chair next to him, but instead walked across the room and sat down on a couch.

“Are they all right?” Stan asked. It was the wrong question, he knew, but he didn’t want to appear uncaring. He didn’t want to see himself in that light.

“They didn’t take it well,” Paul said.

“Of course,” Stan said.

The two men sat quietly for a moment. Stan could hear the barking of a dog and the wind whistling through the shutters, the hum of a dishwasher in the kitchen. All he wanted was to be out of there, driving into the night where no eyes watched him and nobody knew his name.

“You really screwed them up,” Paul said.

What surprised Stan was the lack of anger in the man’s voice. There was no outrage, no condescension, just sadness.

“It wasn’t supposed to be that way,” Stan said. He wondered why he had come, or rather why he now stayed. There was no retribution to be had or wrongs to right. It had been far too long for that, time burying it so deeply that he would never be able to reach. Paul downed what was left of his whiskey and got up to get another. Stan filled his glass.

“It was cancer, if you wanted to know,” Paul said, returning to his seat.

“Jesus. What kind?”

“Ovarian. They didn’t catch it until it was too late,” Paul said. He smiled. “Well, obviously.”

Stan didn’t know if he was allowed to laugh. “I wish I could have been there,” Stan said. Two years ago he had been wrapping up his divorce with Michelle, another chapter of his life he would rather have kept closed.

“It was better this way,” Paul said. “She went quietly.”

“Yeah,” Stan said. He knew he would have had nothing to offer, no words of comfort, or a kiss on the cheek. All it would have been was more pain, memories of the life she was about to leave behind.

“So, where are you headed with that?” Paul asked. He pointed a thumb out the window behind him, towards the truck and trailer. Stan explained his trip. The twenty years in Atlanta and the woman he had come to love in Maine. Her name was Trisha, a masseuse he had met while on vacation in Augusta.

“Well, she prefers ‘physical therapist,’” Stan said. He left out what would be considered less savory: that he had been married at the time. That she was almost twenty years his junior. That he had lied about being married before. He didn’t know how he felt about getting married again. It just seemed like the thing to do.

“You’ve been driving all day?” Paul asked.

“For the most part. Was hoping to spend the night somewhere around here and pick up again tomorrow,” Stan said. He realized how presumptive that would have sounded if it had been Rachel he was talking to now. How see-through and wrongheaded.

Paul seemed to study him for a moment, swirling the whiskey in his glass. “ You can stay here if you want. Not many nights I have a drinking buddy,” Paul said.

Stan wanted to say no. He felt like an intruder, barging his way back into a life he had no business being a part of, but there was a sincerity in Paul’s voice that made him feel responsible, a tired look in his eyes.

“All right,” Stan said.

Paul seemed to brighten at this and downed the last of his whiskey before getting another. They finished the bottle and Paul went down to the basement, returning with a glass jug of moonshine.

“Rachel loved this stuff. No idea why,” Paul said, but Stan knew. Her grandmother had told him in a faraway kitchen, almost half a century ago, about how she used to rub Rachel’s gums with moonshine while she was teething. She had boasted about how quickly it calmed her down, and Rachel had blushed, admitting that she still had a taste for it. He took a strange sense of pride in remembering this, as if in some way it vindicated him.

“We’ll do shots,” Stan said.

The night disappeared along with the liquor, the two of them going back and forth, shot for shot. Paul, despite his slight build, held it well, and Stan worried that he might lose the unspoken contest between them. He wanted to believe that he was made of strong stuff. That he was a real man’s man, but he could feel himself slipping, sinking deeper and deeper beneath the waves.

 

It was only when he was on the road again that Stan could begin to make sense of the night before. He had awoken around noon to an empty house and Paul’s car missing from the driveway. There had been no note or keepsake left behind for Stan’s benefit. No empty gesture to bring him comfort he didn’t need. It appeared as though Paul hadn’t thought about it at all, but had just returned to his routine. There had been some cold coffee in the pot and the last bit of eggs in the pan, but other than that, no indication that he had been there at all. At first Stan had thought about wandering about the house, to rummage through the rooms that he vaguely remembered, but realized that there was no memory of him left there, that forty years had swept him from the stoop like dust. It would have been a desperate act, to dig through the closets and crawlspaces, and so he decided to leave. All he left was a scrap of paper on the coffee table. “Don’t tell them I was here.”

The sun was shining as he left Scranton, just as it had the day he left thirty six years before. He hadn’t thought of turning back then and he didn’t now, content to disappear just as suddenly as he had come. There was nothing left for him in this town, and so he would forget it, just as he had forgotten so many people, so many places. By nightfall he would be in Maine, unpacking his life into a new house, though he doubted it would be his last.

 

 

 

 

 

Steve Hicks was born and raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He is a senior at the University of Pittsburgh and is working on his first novel.